Two Fracking Giants Lock Arms To Become America’s Biggest Gas Producer

A pair of fracking giants announced a deal Monday to combine into America’s largest natural gas producer as households pay more for the fuel.

EQT said it will acquire Range Resources by swapping stock, in a deal that would create a company worth more than $50 billion including debt, according to the companies’ joint release. Reuters valued the deal itself at about $13 billion and reported that the combined company would be the country’s top natural gas producer.

The deal would mean “very little” for natural gas prices and consumers’ gas and electric bills, Eli Rubin, a senior energy analyst at EBW Analytics Group, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Both EQT and Range already cut production during periods of exceptionally low prices, typically during autumn or spring when weather-driven demand is mild,” Rubin noted. “A regional behemoth would only strengthen the economic rationale for production curtailments and cutting supply during periods of weakness.”

“While economies of scale and synergies will occur, these returns are more likely to flow to investors than to lower wholesale natural gas prices,” he added.

“The combined company would not have enough scale to exercise meaningful pricing power, even if you look only at the Marcellus/Utica region,” Alex Stevens, manager of policy and communications at the Institute for Energy Research, said in a statement to the DCNF. “If it deliberately curtailed production, other producers — both in Appalachia and other basins — would readily fill the gap, and competitors would undercut any attempt to withhold supply.”

Stuart Turley, president and CEO of Sandstone Group, said consumers and regulators “should not be concerned” about the merger. “In the case of EQT and Range, it is a good thing for investors and consumers,” Turley said in a statement to the DCNF.

The merger “won’t make much difference for consumers’ utility bills in the near term,” energy analyst and writer David Blackmon said in a statement to the DCNF.

The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment to the DCNF and EQT and Range did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The deal cannot close until federal antitrust waiting periods expire or end, and the companies agreed to pursue “divestitures and other remedies as may be necessary to obtain clearance,” subject to limits in their merger agreement, according to EQT’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“As the lowest-cost natural gas producer in the industry, supported by multiple decades of high-quality inventory, the combined company will offer exceptional resilience through commodity cycles while maintaining significant upside to strengthening natural gas fundamentals,” EQT President and CEO Toby Rice said in the release.

Residential customers paid higher natural gas prices in each of the first seven months of 2026 than in the same months of 2025, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. The average price delivered to homes in July was $26.45 per thousand cubic feet, up from $25.44 a year earlier and $22.78 in July 2024.

The EIA expects homes that heat with natural gas to spend about 9 percent less on energy this winter, according to its Oct. 7 outlook.

Range shareholders will get 0.987 EQT shares for each one they own, leaving them with roughly 27 percent of the merged company and the buyer’s existing investors with about 73 percent, the release said.

Reuters calculated that the terms put Range’s value at $12.83 billion, which works out to $54.91 a share, 20.6 percent above the company’s Oct. 23 close.

Range shares were up 15.1 percent at $52.43 and EQT shares were down 3.7 percent in Monday trading, Reuters reported.

The companies expect $325 million in annual savings within two years, drawn from corporate costs, operations and commodities marketing, according to the release. They see a path to topping $600 million in the long term, in part from “improved margins from natural gas, LNG [liquefied natural gas] and NGL [natural gas liquids] marketing efforts.”

The combined company would produce more than nine billion cubic feet equivalent of gas a day, hold over three decades of drilling locations on almost three million net acres and own over 3,700 miles of midstream assets, the companies said. For scale, Expand Energy, another large gas producer, averaged roughly 7.2 billion cubic feet equivalent a day in 2025, Reuters reported.

If the agreement is terminated under certain circumstances, EQT would owe Range a $1.148 billion fee and Range would owe EQT $423 million, EQT’s filing said.

EQT now expects Appalachian gas demand could rise to 25 billion cubic feet a day, up from its earlier estimate of 20 billion, Rice said on a conference call, according to Reuters.

“Our Board of Directors unanimously determined that this transaction will enhance Range shareholders’ ability to participate in a constructive long-term natural gas and NGL macro outlook,” Range President and CEO Dennis Degner said in the release.

The deal still needs approval from regulators and both companies’ shareholders, and the companies expect to close in the first quarter of 2027, according to the release. The combined company would stay headquartered in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. Degner and one other Range representative would join EQT’s board.

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